


North London

by darktreesbigvoices



Category: Mission: Impossible (Movies)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Ethan is Bi, Hurt/Comfort, Luther is a great friend, M/M, implied relationship but it's kind of weird, post surgery recovery, very unprofessional surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:47:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26904598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darktreesbigvoices/pseuds/darktreesbigvoices
Summary: A mission goes to shit, Ethan's appendix ruptures.
Relationships: Benji Dunn & Ethan Hunt, Benji Dunn/Ethan Hunt
Comments: 3
Kudos: 25





	North London

Ethan sits up, or tries. They are in a car. Benji’s car. The getaway car, the Plan B car. His ribs are taped. “Where are we?”

“London, Ethan.” Benji’s answer is seeped in exhaustion and chagrin. He has his forearms leaning on the steering wheel. Ethan turns his head in time to see the clock tower, Big Ben, flash in his peripheral.

“Why?” 

Benji takes two stoplights and one intersection to answer. “We fucked up.”

* * *

The safe-house in North London is immaculate and unremarkable. Ethan does not get to see the route to it because he passes out ten minutes before they arrive, Benji’s clipped voice still echoing in his head, taking up all room expect for the blips of pain that steadily build until the world goes black. He fights it, but his vision doubles, and finally he does relax.

When he wakes up, Benji is trying to drag him out of the car. Ethan opens one eye, and discovers that it is the most he can do.

“Godfuckingdamnit.” Benji says. Then, “Oh god, you’re awake.” he looks relived.

Ethan tries to remember why he feels like this, but his mind slips around the answer like a bird evading a net. “Hey Benji.”

“Thank fuck, I thought you were-c’mon, can you sit up? Probably not.”

Ethan shrugs and tries. The world threatens darkness again. Benji is speaking in a soothing voice and his face is pure panic. “Ok ok ok ok, okay. Don’t move. Everything’s fine, we don’t need you passing out again. Just put your arm over my shoulder-can you do that? Good. Ok, c’mon.”

Pain is everything. The gravel drive is pain, and so is the green door that Benji almost breaks down to get into the safe-house. The whole world, Ethan realized (not for the first time) as he felt nausea burst into his brain like a nuclear bomb, is nothing when you are in pain. It does not not exist. Pain is the world.

* * *

Luther enters the safe-house in North London with a fair amount of worry, but some confidence. He has a med-kit, and a bottle of very expensive whiskey tucked under his arm. Benji looks like the world is coming to an end. Luther is still sure of himself, because Dunn is always worried, like a ferret constantly sensing danger.  
His confidence is shaken when he sees Ethan.

Ethan is laying on his back on the bed, sweat running down his face, silent; but with his eyes showing the whites like a scared animal. He tracks Luther across the room, but seems to be stowing his energy for the pain, because he doesn’t say anything.

Luther turns to Benji. “When’d this happen?”

“I was getting him out of the car. It’s his appendix, I think.”

“Stomach hard?”

“Like iron. He started puking about half an hour ago.”

Luther assesses the damage hesidently, “Two bullets, one in the stomach, once just left of the kidney. Broken ribs, twelve I think. And you were right, his appendix is burst. Looks like we’re gonna need this whiskey after all.”

Benji’s face twists. “No morphine?”

“Don’t have any.” Luther looks grimly at Ethan’s face. “Get him something so he doesn’t bite through his tongue.” He pats Ethan’s shoulder. “You’re gonna be ok.”

Ethan tries to say something, but it comes out as a growl ground out between his teeth. He nods instead.

Ethan takes two swallows of the liquor and shuts his eyes. He makes it ten seconds without screaming, and what he screams is, “no no nonononoNONOGODNOpleaseNOnnoplease-“ and then he passes out.

Benji paces the hallway outside the door. When he hears the noise, at first he thinks Ethan is playing one of those torture tapes again, one of the ones where they pry off fingernails or brand you with cattle irons. He puts his hands over his ears.

* * *

Fifteen days.

The bed Benji sleeps in is a twin, a rather large twin that he sleeps in alone, and has nightmares in and wakes up shaking in and reaches for a drink in. On the fifteenth night of this, Benji wakes up at midnight and decides to drink until the sun comes up. Then, he hears someone stumble down the hall and into his room.

“Oh, hey you.” Benji mumbles. He is half drunk, and ashamed.

“Scoot.” Ethan orders. He hasn’t talked much since the operation, and despite being up and ready for anything (walking, eating, planning the Next Move), his voice is still ragged and hoarse. Sometimes he wakes Benji up with his screams.

Ethan climbs in bed beside him. He is warm. He is not clumsy, only ungraceful, like a wounded panther.

Benji winces for him. “Ouch. Careful, ribs.”

“Very careful.”

“Took you long enough.”

Ethan doesn’t answer for a while. Benji stares at the blue ceiling, and the slash of orange street light. He missed this.

“-embarrassed…” Ethan mumbles.

Benji turns his head. “What?”

Ethan shrugs. “I never knew I was that fragile.”

“You’re embarrassed because your appendix burst?” Benji is incredulous. Ethan nods.

He is very still, tense. Desperate for validation, maybe.

Benji clears his throat. Ethan hadn’t been avoiding him because he was still sick, he had been avoiding because Ethan Hunt was embarrassed, maybe crippling so, that his body had picked such an inconvenient time to self destruct. Benji pats Ethan’s shoulder, and some of his neck, blindly. “You are good, you know that? Like, scary good. Morally, I mean.”

“I’m sorry.” Ethan says flatly. His voice is flat, and his face is unemotional, and Benji doesn’t realized he is crying until they start to fuck and his face comes away wet with Ethan’s tears.

When he surges up, groaning, finally, Benji has to squint through the dark and his own impending orgasm to see his face. 

* * *

He had been opened up, his chest a red hovel, and his guts were spilling out, but what bothered Benji most was the smell. Like a poorly cleaned toilet. Foul and sour.

Benji sat up and took a breath, and then a few more. He focused in on the red light of the electric clock on the bedside table. The room was grey and cold. Rain sounded loudly outside.

Ethan had somehow gotten onto the floor, and was curled into a tight ball. Benji slid off the bed and stumbled over to him, his bowels seizing. “Ethan? You ok?”

For a moment, he thought he was dreaming the same dream, except Ethan was the one with a hole in his chest. But it was too far down. And there was only a little bit of blood seeping through his t-shirt.

Benji had sweated through his shirt.

Ethan stirred and sat up groggily.

He doesn’t seem to register the blood, or Benji for that matter, but it is hard to tell in the dark. Benji feels his bowels catch again, it’s too…late for this. That’s a good way to put it.  
But he has to deal with this.

“Ethan? You’re bleeding. Go lay down on the bed. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Ethan does concise orders rather well. Straight to the point. He finds the blood on his t-shirt and presses his palm against it, clambers one-handed back onto the bed.

Benji goes to the bathroom. The whole world feels like it’s being emptied through him, and he wonders if he ate something bad, or if it’s just the stress. His hands shake, too.

It’s Ethan’s voice that worries him the most. “I’m on the bed, Benji.” It’s blurred. Slurry.

“Are you drunk?” Benji asks, half believing it, half not (Ethan doesn’t drink).

“No.” It’s almost a laugh.

“Why were you on the floor,” Benji says, and then it hits him. The grains of morphine on top of the med-kit. Fast acting. Ethan’s eyes look like glassy orbs, they hold nothing, or something that Ethan is trying to manufacture, something soft that he can’t quite grasp in his present state. Love, maybe.

Ethan smiles. His eyes, usually grey, look dark. They shine with real emotion when Benji helps him take off his shirt so he can assess the damage done to the stitches. “Benji.”

“Ethan.”

“I…love you.”

Benji feels blood bloom in his forehead. “That’s the morphine. Just lay still, I’m gonna fix you up.”

“He’s fixing me up.” Ethan tells the ceiling. “He’s helping me. He’s helping me.”

“Yeah.”

“Dunn. I love you, Dunn.” Ethan reaches down and tries to take Benji hand, just as Benji makes the first stitch. Benji waves him away. “You don’t really love me. How much of that morphine did you take?”

“All that was there.”

“What?”

“No…not that much….four…you know I’d never hurt you, Benji…I love you more then I love New York.”

“And you don’t really love New York, yeah, ok. I’ve heard that one.”

“You’re not listening to me.”

“You’re _high_ , Ethan.” Benji makes the last few incisions angrily, bending over his work, and knots the thread. “You’re lucky you couldn’t feel that.”

Ethan is silent. Then he says, slowly, “I know I’m not good at showing it.”

“Hey…” Benji put a hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “Look, you’re really loopy right now, and I know you think you feel like you might…I dunno, love me. But it’s the morphine, ok? I think what your feeling…I think it’s security, more then anything. Safety. And I feel that too, but I don’t wanna marry your sorry ass anymore then I want to go back to Lahore. Alright? That’s just the way it goes, innit? Sometimes you die alone, and sometimes you get to get married, and sometimes it’s more complicated.” He starts to clean the needle.

“I don’t want to marry you.” Ethan rolls his head as if it’s as heavy as a bowling ball. He rolls his chin down to his chest and then back against the pillows. His tongue is exploring his teeth as if he can’t quite feel them there, and he drools on Benji’s fingers. Benji doesn’t say anything to that, and wipes his hand on the sheets. The sheets look nightmarish, covered in blood, glinting with needles. The cleaning bill will be hell, but most things are at this time of night. This job is hell, sometimes.

“Are you going to sleep, love?” Benji asks causally, putting away the med-kit. Ethan’s face twists. He nods. “Morphine’s wearing off.”

“Serves you right, naughty boy. Eating my M…” Benji’s voice abruptly drops it’s rough tone, and he trails off. “You get some sleep.”

“Ok.”

“Do you want me to stay?”

“Please.”

Benji lays down beside him, and his smell is comforting and good in the dark. It is like the smell of worn covers, coffee beans, dryer sheets, medical supplies, burnt wiring, sweat.

“Oh, you little boy.” Benji babbles happily, “Who’s my little boy? Hmm?”

“Oh god.” Ethan sighs smilingly, shifts his shoulders on the mattress, “I am.”

“You are?”

“Yes. Yeah.”

They wrestle around on the bed for a while. It is not sexual, but not without intention. Benji is bold and tickles Ethan’s side until his laughter turns from a chuckle to a pronounced cackle that is almost silent. Then Ethan rolls over onto him and plants his elbows on the pillow. Breathless “I love you.” mixed with the dark.

Benji rolls his eyes. “Of course. What do you love, my fading good looks?”

“Yes.”

“I’m losing my hair, you know.”

“Bald as an egg by thirty.”

“You fucker. I’m thirty five, almost.” Benji yawns. "Lay your head down. Go to sleep."

Ethan huffs and rolls onto his back. He is finally still, after a long while, and Benji closes his eyes too, but doesn't sleep.

* * *

It must be almost three in the morning, and Benji squints at the clock halfheartedly. Nearly four. Still raining. Ethan pulls his shirt over his head and lays back down, sighing. “Can you check if-“ he gestures vaguely to the stitches. “I’m sorry. I’m tired.”

“It’s ok.”

Ethan has not eaten solid food since the operation four days ago. He has been living on bottled water and apple sauce, and he is grungy with fear sweat and the smell of 100% pure alcohol and clean bandages. His pupils are blown to the size of quarters.

Benji prods the long line of puckered skin gingerly. It is healing nicely, no signs of infection. He can see the places were he dropped stitches because Ethan had started to wake up. There will be a scar stretching from Ethan’s abdominal down to the crest of his hip bone. “It’s ok.” Benji says again, meaning the wound. “You heal like a champ, you know that right?”

“I’m your best patient.”

“You’re my only patient.”

Ethan sits up slowly. His hair falls over his face, and Benji can’t see if he winces or not. “You wanna take a bath.” Benji states.

Ethan eyes him warily. “Where is Luther?”

“Recon.” (Wondering the streets looking for ways out, to see if they had been followed. Wet darkness feeding the mounting paranoia.)

Ethan is silent. Benji can feel his discomfort with the idea, although it might be his own. “I try not to maim you any further. Alright?”

Ethan nods.

It takes them both working in the dark to get him undressed, and then Benji escapes to the hallway, trying to give Ethan some semblance of privacy. He stands in the tiny bathroom and watches the tub fill, dreading the next part.

Back in the dark bedroom, the rain is louder, somehow. Ethan has somehow gotten out of bed himself, and is gripping the doorframe for support, holding his ribs. He is humming something that sounds like The Smiths. “Hey Benji. Ouch.”

“Ouch, yeah? C’mon.” Benji puts his arm around Ethan’s shoulders and Ethan limps, really wincing now, leaning on him. He is surprised that underneath rank sweat, Ethan smells good to him. Earthy. Human.

Unsteady, Ethan lowers himself into the bathtub and starts undoing the bandages. Benji wavers, not sure if he should leave or not. Finally, he sits down on the closed toilet lid.

He has seen Ethan in various states of undress. He has seen him naked, even, multiple times, but it was always in the context of either torture rooms, or on an operating table. Both bloody and impersonal. Stop the bleeding if you can.

But this is intimate.

Ethan hisses as he examines the stitches. In the light, it looks even worse. “Shit.”

“Oh, yeah. Horrible. It got a little lopsided because you were waking up. Had to keep all the guts in.”

Ethan sits stiffly in the tub, trying not to get the stitches wet. Benji listens to the rain and works the stiff muscles in his hands. He tries not to look. Privacy, again. But he is there, if Ethan needs him.

Ethan washes himself. Water gets everywhere. Benji gets him a towel. Ethan takes Benji’s arm, squeezes, and pulls him down so Benji has to stoop over, brushes his lips against his.

It’s the morphine. It has to be.  
He tastes salt, and blood. The world seems to have lost it’s edges. Ethan sighs and wraps his arms awkwardly around him, his chin hooked over Benji’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. Can you help me out?”

“Nothing to be sorry about.” Benji says gently.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> I dunno why, but I was picturing Shaun from ShaunoftheDead as Benji when I wrote this...


End file.
